The Shadow of Death- 3rd Perth/West Australia Regionals

A while back, during my early Netrunner days, the first corp deck I won a small local tournament with was a GRNDL Supermodernism deck. Part of the nostalgia I have for that deck is rooted in the secondary win condition of the flatline. You could rush out agendas and go for the AP win, or you could also just kill the runner. There is a certain elegance to having more than one way to win, I find.

But since then I've become more and more invested in Haas-Bioroid, running some FA decks, pure glacier out of both ETF and Foundry, etc until I decided to try out the Punitive strategy. And from that, this deck was born. I've had quite a bit of success in the local scene with it- taking a couple game nights and two leagues back-to-back, so I decided it was ready for Regionals after a few tweaks.

The deck ended up going 5-3 overall over the course of 5 rounds of Swiss and 3 games in the top 8. One loss (my final match of the day) was from pure agenda flood, so I'm sort of only partly counting the deck itself for that loss- I probably should've bluffed better! On the other hand, I did also secure two very early flatline wins- one in turn 2 and the other turn 4.

The base idea is to make a load of money, set up some taxing ice over your centrals and then enough of a combination of ice/ash/cash and punitives in hand to threaten a win via scoring enough that the runner lets you kill them. Either that or just score out those agendas.

Economy- Melange is really the star of the show here. If you can get one up and running and get 2-3 turns out of it, you're pretty much set until the late game after you've had to do some heavy scoring or have a lot of ice on the field. Restructure is a solid burst during turns that you're laying down ice, installing upgrades or sneaking out a 3/2. I tested the deck in Foundry for a while, relying on the Foundry ability to get out those taxing servers quicker, but the ETF credit is just too strong when you want a solid lead for Punitives. Don't be afraid to go install - credit - credit, either, if you need to.

Agendas- The 5/3s are necessary for your Punitive strategy, and I've found that the low bioroid count and largely cheap-ish ice suit means you wont get too much out of Priority Requisition, so I've opted for the Fragment agendas. Eden and Utopia are very powerful for your scoring remote if you can get them out early at all, and Hades is ridiculously potent against Noise. Vitruvius might seem like an odd choice, but in fact it's probably one of the most powerful tools in the deck. A twice-overscored PV will turn a single Punitive Counterstrike in your hand into 3 copies, allowing you to threaten the flatline immediately. In a pinch, they can let you recur econ or utility cards in the late game.

Ice- Since you want to spend most of your time taxing the runner and not make yourself broke in the process, the NEXT suit is basically perfect for that. The only catch is parasite recursion, which has historically been a problem for me out of Kate decks, but rarely too much of an issue from Anarchs that tend to run fairly low on credits anyway. Turing is an excellent counter to Eater, or can allow you to sneak an early 5/3 or PV out. I popped in a single Markus for some ice strength diversity, as well as two Architects to punish early running without a killer as well as a constant 2 credit tax on central runs.

Utility cards- Archived memories serves a similar role as a PV token, allowing you to double Punitive with just one in hand, or to get back some vital cards that were trashed previously. Cyberdex is a strong counter to parasite or datasucker play, and can also save your bacon from deep dig medium runs. Valley Grid is where things can get interesting. It clearly synergies extremely well with Punitive- allowing you to set up a sort of Xanatos Gambit on your remote. You pop a 5/3 in with a Valley grid and 3+ ETR ice, and the runner has to choose between letting you score it, possibly getting killed, or trying something tricky to prevent either option. It's also one way to be able to land a kill through a Plascrete (or even two, if you do things right). Sometimes it can even be enough of a deterrent to stop them running on non match-point agendas, or to force them to run through your taxing ice purely to trash it even with no agenda there. Edge of World was another gambit card there to try and help secure the flatline. I've used it well before, but I didn't install it once in 8 games. I think the influence is absolutely spent better- a big regret on my part.

Other changes I'd probably make is to drop Next Gold to a 1-of. At strength 4 and cost 8 it's a bit too costly for what it is, I feel. I might try Ichi 2.0 instead, or just another Ichi 1.0